Tracks
by trufflemores
Summary: Barry loves skating to a halt at superspeed.


**Author's Notes** : I haven't written a Speed Force fic in ages - it's about time I correct that! 3 This fic could be considered a companion piece to an earlier work of mine, "Trails," but you needn't read Trails to enjoy this piece.

Similar themes - the magical, the mythical wonder of Speed Force. Enjoy!

(And, if you are so inclined, leave a remark! I do love your feedback.)

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Skating to a halt at superspeed doesn't lose its charm.

Barry loves the way the ground stretches out unbroken beneath himself, the way the Earth melts underneath his heels. To pull off the simplest-of-outward-appearing-stunts, his balance has to be perfect; to ensure that it is, he holds his breath to keep the disruptive force of his next inhale from altering his stance. His timing also has to be spot-on: if he slows down too soon, he fumbles and pitches forward; too late and he loses his feet as they slide out from underneath him. Either style of missed landing stirs laughter from the sidelines and inflicts a handful of punishing new bruises. It won't stop him from trying it again the next chance he gets.

He loves to run, loves to feel his heart pound, his raw animal power converted from potential to kinetic energy, but there is something ecstatic, almost ethereal about being able to glide at superspeed. He can be running a thousand miles an hour, the world a blur around him, before he leaps for his next step and lands on his feet at precisely the right angle to start speeding down his path without any movement at all, stillness in the Speed Force, the kinetic average of the universe, motionless-motion.

Falling into a partial crouch to reclaim his center of gravity, he can cover serious ground in road-searing flashes of red light, traveling up to a hundred miles on a good flat stretch of land before some incongruity finally tips him out of balance. Hubris alone dictates how far he pushes it before finally slipping out of his linear shot into a parabolic finish, asphalt grinding as his feet finally dig in, settle. He's always breathless after, laughing, ecstatic, jumping up just to release some of the spring-loaded energy in his legs, certain he could star-jump if only he was a little bit _faster_.

Contrary to the Flash tags spray-painted throughout Central City, he cannot create a visible lightning bolt in the pavement. He can create the impression of one in his infamous blink-of-an-eye blur, a passage that headlines papers, but to leave something in his wake that lasts long enough to draw attention, he can only carve straight lines. Sometimes he does within city limits, late at night, when he is flushed with endorphins and eager to simply enjoy the experience of being the _fastest_ man alive, gliding to a halt at the end of the street and leaving burning asphalt glowing in his wake, his passage like that of a low-flying comet.

The few witnesses who first see the phenomenon post enough pictures online to stir up a dedicated following of "Streak chasers." He smiles at the nod to his old alias and gives them enough sightings to fill search engines with spectacular examples. A fan, wielding a slow-motion camera, managed to capture him in the act, his body an intangible thing, clean lines overlapping as he advanced, even in the still frame, to the next moment in time. The caption attached to the accompanying article read simply: "Mercury lives."

It gets easier and more dangerous, therefore _better,_ as time passes and his Flash boots lose their traction, becoming virtually friction-less in the field. Cisco offers to swap them out, but Barry has already burned through enough suits; it seems unfair to ditch any part of the most recent one that's still standing. He feels a strange kinship with his latest suit, an attachment that only grows irrationally fonder over time. It survives, even as it takes inevitable wear and tear. And his boots are the most pronounced indicators of that wear and tear beyond direct attacks: they show where he has been, and still ache for where he is going.

Breathing in the summer solstice air, Barry stands at the city limits facing the fields leading out to Star City, six hundred miles away. Vibrating in place, he feels energized, free, despite the looming menaces awaiting him on the home front. There are always threats to his existence – to his _city's_ existence – but with Wally and the rest of Team Flash on guard tonight, he's free to be – himself.

Barry Allen: The Flash.

It makes him smile, shaking out his arms, jumping up and down a few times until he's almost chomping at the bit to run. He holds back, letting the energy build, letting it reach inadvisably restless proportions, like a fire set under his skin, before finally taking a deep breath and taking off.

When he first launches himself into the night, instantly surpassing two hundred miles per hour, his vantage is a strange mix of speed and slowness, the rest of the world falling behind as he picks up his pace. His breath, quick and heady with exertion, soon falls off, becoming slow, deep, subsonic. His suit readings pick up towards their optimal levels, his resting heartrate living at a full-tilt sprint. He would rather break his back a thousand times than surrender the feeling that builds in him as he runs, and runs, and _runs_. Faster-faster-faster-faster, catch-me-if-you-can, and he disappears into the darkness, yellow light sparking off his heels, every muscle working in perfect concert with gravity, rewriting the rules, bending the shape of the universe.

Physics works with him, allowing him to effortlessly climb faster, to surge past the sound barrier. He runs without gasping, runs without anoxia strangling in his chest, runs without a sense or need to slow down, ever. He runs like a beast unbridled, like some other-multiversal creature unleashed on his own Earth, and with a laugh that can only inhabit his soul without escaping him, he wonders if that isn't exactly the truth.

Maybe he was never meant to be here but lost his way among the multiverses, born on a place where this space was home, and this feeling encapsulated the kind of animal he was meant to be. Moving, so fast nobody standing still could see him, only the blur of red light he leaves behind, the red light he carves into the asphalt as it heats beneath his heels – this kind of fury in the night, joyful and uncapturable.

With the Speed Force in his veins, he knows it's the truth. The day he tasted that power was the end of Barry Allen's sole existence, the end of his comfort with his home universe. It was also the revelation of this other realm that he was meant to inhabit. From that moment onward, he would never belong solely to one space.

Maybe, he thinks, a smile overtaking him as a wolfish sort of satisfaction courses through him, it is the marriage between the multiversal and the extra-multiversal spaces that appeals to him most. The acknowledgement _of_ both roles in his life, Speed Force and human, that calls him back to it, night-after-night, lifetime-after-lifetime.

Ensconced in the present, he keeps surging across the landscape, running like he won't ever stop. He doesn't need to – he could run forever like this, forever and beyond, crashing through the barriers the multiverses would throw in his way – but he _wants_ to, because there is a perfect intermedium he craves, something even better than forever-forward-motion.

Still moving so fast he risks more than minor bodily harm for a faulty step, he takes two more running leaps before sliding effortlessly onto the sides of his feet, balancing his weight in slow motion. The night cascades around him like a wave circling overhead, building, rolling, and he balances effortlessly, sinking low to keep himself from tumbling on these newly-smoothed boots, God, he loves these boots, he's moving so fast he'll break his neck if he falls and he loves the way it makes his heart pound.

He doesn't have a death wish, doesn't long for the misery of lost nights recovering from pain, too damaged to embrace this particular ecstasy, but there is something animal, something _chaotic_ within him that craves the unknowing, the need for perfect control, for perfect execution, for perfect regard for himself and his exact place and time in the universe.

He thinks it's the Speed Force instilling so much entropy in his soul, joy building and crashes like a wave around him, consuming him, until at last he alters his posture, straightening his stance and curving his feet, slowing himself down until – in one sleek susurration, he halts on the pavement.

He exhales hard, energized and _alive,_ flushed with it. Looking back, he beholds the trail of yellow lightning carved into the road, evaporating in its trail to the faint points of light in the distance marking his city, _his_ city. Pride and joy swell in his chest at the sight of it, knowing that it is his playground and his responsibility, a place where he is the only thing standing between a bullet and its target, a tragedy and its fourth act.

It would be easy to run forever, to inhabit that place of perfect stillness where he doesn't even have to take a breath, where he can simply _exist_ in perfect harmony with the human side of him and the Speed side of him, a howling, indescribable joy overtaking him – but to look back at the city and all it beckons, like a comet he arcs back around, and races home.

For every ounce of misery and suffering that it has brought him, the Speed Force has compensated him a thousand-fold, channeling its energy into this unnamable ecstasy, where he can run and he can decide, and indeed choose, not to fall.

When he glides to a stop in front of his family and friends, the simple, humble echo of his movement is an homage to this greater arc, this actualization of everything he _can_ be.

Mythical.


End file.
